Champlain College is celebrating its 50th birthday with pride in its growth, while some in the hillside neighborhood surrounding the Burlington campus remain uneasy.
Champlain has grown from a one-building, 60-student school offering two-year associates’ degrees in 1958 to 42 buildings, about 1,950 undergraduates, four-year bachelor’s degree programs and two online master’s degree programs.
Some in the surrounding Hill neighborhood, which is marked by stately single-family homes, say the college has grown too fast and too much.
But college officials say they’re trying to accommodate the neighbors’ concerns, calling the neighborhood an amenity that attracts new students.